The pool was on 54th street between 2nd and 1st avenue. It was across the street from the El Morocco. Boxing was on the first floor and pool in basement. Lou Lipsky was the NYC Chief Lifeguard. A short burly guy who was slightly gruff but supportive.
There was no union. The lifeguards were generally tall and muscular. We doubled as police on the beach. The cops did not want to get sand in their shoes. There was no union. We worked 8 hour days six days a week. We got paid $60 a week.
The lifeguards were a brilliant group. They became billionaires, world famous doctors, lawyers, scientists, playwrights. It was a group par excellence.
The above is a picture of my most famous save. A young woman had a seizure some 40 yards out. She was aggressive and it was a difficult save. Thus the picture.
Recently I went back to Midland Beach on Staten Island. The lifeguards were short, somewhat dumb, and not ones I would remember from a Sunday at Coney Island keeping 1 million people controlled.
The NY Times has a piece on why the NY lifeguards are so short in supply. They note:
Parks officials had sought to gain more new guards this summer by simplifying the rigorous test prospective lifeguards take to qualify for the 16-week, 40-hour training course. The test weeds out many potential recruits largely through its 50-yard swim, which prospects historically had to finish in 35 seconds. Faced with high failure rates — last year, of 900 applicants, only about 26 percent passed the test — and complaints from applicants, parks officials extended the acceptable time for this summer’s applicants to 45 seconds. They also pushed for more transparency by mandating that applicants be notified of their swimming times, as opposed to merely whether they had passed or failed. Howard Carswell, a former rescue diver with the city’s Police Department, said his 16-year-old son, a competitive swimmer, withdrew from lifeguard training this year because the officials overseeing it were surly and “generally giving the kids trying to get the certificate a hard time.” He said his son had opted to spend the summer lifeguarding at an upstate lake for better pay. “It wasn’t worth the aggravation,” he said. “It was just a generally depressing environment for kids that are looking to become New York City lifeguards.”
Now the 50 yard vs 440 yard says a great deal. The 440 was a demonstration of endurance, my save demands endurance. It was not how fast I got there but haw well I did after that. Second, unions now control the process, Lou Lipsky went for quality, unions in my opinion and in my experience collect small minded control freaks.
It is a shame that the band of brothers who were lifeguards has become a collection of union hacks.
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